


champagne year

by kpkndy



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Deadlock Gang, Eventual Catharsis, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Repressed Memories, past trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 12:10:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10831005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kpkndy/pseuds/kpkndy
Summary: jesse doesn't remember. jesse doesn't want to remember





	champagne year

**Author's Note:**

> dipping my toe into the mcreyes water. if you like this, please let me know.

“Startle you, did he?”  
  
Jesse’s head is bowed to look at his hands. They twist in his lap --this neat little habit Gabe has witnessed a million times where the kid rubs layers off of skin off of his palm with the opposite thumb. He does it when he’s nervous.  
  
Without looking up, Jesse makes a noise of confirmation, and nods.  
  
His hands continue to work, but with more precision than usual. It’s not out of absent nervousness. No --Jesse would be happy to bounce his leg or twiddle his thumbs or whistle or something equally banal if it were just restlessness. Absent anxiety. Not this --not some real fear.  
  
Gabe wonders if it’s just energy. If the mission had Jesse so excited that he’s just flatlining now. Some do.  
  
“You want a downer?” he offers, without derision. It’d probably do the kid good, as it does alot of the others. Jesse looks stuck on something, and uppers and downers help a good portion of recruits to keep moving.  
  
Jesse seems to consider it for a second, before shaking his head. He still doesn’t look up.  
  
“Naw,” He murmurs, gently, “S’fine.” He sounds so suddenly small. Younger, somehow, and before Gabe can think, he’s responding to it.  
  
“Hey,” he says, in a softer voice, leaning forward to touch Jesse --to still the incessant and nervous moving of his hands.  
  
Mistake --Jesse’s hands shoot back suddenly. Defensively. As if he has something to fear from Gabe. And for his part, Gabe lets the distance be, staying his hand, moving back slowly as if trying his best not to startle a wild horse.  
  
He looks at Jesse. He notes the way the kid swallows, then, and looks up only for a second.  
  
“You --y’were right. M’just startled s’all.” The kid’s hands fold again, and in just under a second they’re back at it. Only this time, he’s working his thumb around the opposite ring finger. It’s methodical. Like he’s trying to clean his hands, or something.  
  
It’s a strange notion, but stranger still when Gabe remembers that all of his boys stay gloved on missions. No papertrail, no fingerprints, all the rest. Whatever the kid is trying to get off of his hands has been there longer than the last hour.  
  
He thinks about asking, but doesn’t. Gabe’s not new to signs of distress. Prying is just another way to pick at a scab, so he leans back fully and keeps his hands to himself, but his eyes on the kid. He waits, for a few seconds, because Jesse’s dogshit at silence and even worse at keeping questions to himself.  
  
But seconds pass in silence. And when Jesse does speak, it’s in that small, childlike voice, asking, “D’you mind if I do take a pill? I changed my mind.”  
  
That’s a worse sign than the silence. Worse than the way Jesse stands, swaying with the tilt of the transport, waiting expectantly on Gabe --who should ask. Gabe, who should know what’s burning the kid out before handing him his ticket to sleep, or God, or peace.  
  
But he doesn’t. He just fiddles with the pack on the seat next to him and hands the kid an innocuous yellow pill, no bigger than a thumbtack. Something to ease his troubles before they land.  
  
Jesse takes the pill, quickly, carefully, between his thumb and forefinger like he’s trying to minimise the contact they have, before murmuring a quiet, “Thanks, boss.”  
  
He walks quietly towards the back of the transport, where the lights are darker, and a few still bodies have already had similar ideas. Gabe watches him bed down, stiff and tense, throwing his head back when he swallows the thing without water, before climbing onto the mattress pad.  
  
The matter if out of his hands, then, and Gabe looks away, focusing on the distant hum of the generator. His mind turns to to mission they’ve just run --an intel grab, nothing short of routine. He’d expected resistance, minimal as it’d been, none of his boys injured or worse. That’s what’s puzzling him.  
  
Jesse doesn’t have a real scratch to show for himself. Not a bullet-wound or a bruise, really, and Gabe can’t fathom a reason for the kid’s behaviour. Usually, Jesse tingles from the kill. And usually, he’s bright-eyed and obnoxious about it, sat before Gabe and talking a mile a minute about what he’s seen and done.  
  
But there’s not a word from the kid tonight, and the silence that Gabe usually craves is so haunting that he looks to another one of his boys for the answer.  
  
Olsen, a Norwegian, blue-eyed little bastard is sitting further up the transport, peeling an orange. Gabe walks over to him with all the ease that one can as the floor beneath him tilts and keens. The kid drops the orange into his lap when he sees Gabe, straightening immediately, barely able to get a word out before Gabe waves a tired hand.  
  
“At ease.” He says, gruffly, before tilting his head back towards the other, sleeping bodies. “You see anything happen to McCree tonight?”  
  
Olsen picks up his orange and picks at a corner of loose peel absently. “What do you mean?”  
  
Gabe looks back at the other end of  the transport again to try to fathom a description. He doesn’t know why. It’s not as if he can even see Jesse, what with the distance, and the lighting.  
  
“I was hoping you could tell me.” he says, simply. “Kid looks like a cat on a hot tin roof or something.” Taking a second, he considers what he knows. “I heard somebody got the drop on him.”  
  
At that, Olsen nods, fiddling with the fruit, nervous for looking Gabe in the eye. “Yessir.” He says, levelly. “Some guy came right up behind him, ya know--” The kid makes a sudden, clamping gesture, “--tried to strangle him or something.”  
  
“That’s it?” Gabe coughs out, a little brusquer than intended.  
  
Olsen takes it like it’s personal, and shrinks away from Gabe a little, shrugging. “That’s all I know about it.”  
  
Gabe taps the railing he’s leaning against just once, gently, in a concluding gesture. He doesn’t want to pry right now --hell, he doesn’t even know if there’s anything more to pry, and Olsen could probably use the rest as much as the rest of them. So Gabe says, “Alright.” and dips his head, taking a step away before turning back around again. “Keep an eye on him, would you?”  
  
Nodding politely, Olsen says, “Of course, boss.” He says it all curt but that’s probably about as deep as it goes. Gabe can’t really blame him. None of these kids signed up to be Jesse’s chaperone.  
  
He leaves it at that, letting the kid get back to his orange as he takes his previous seat up, again, keeping an eye on the ATC reports and checking for anything new from any higher power. Jack’s quiet tonight; busy, as per, and Gabe falls asleep, leaning against the railing that separates seats, rocked peacefully by the motion of the transport.  
  
He wakes, stiff, with an hour to landing, and notes a tiny movement in the corner of his eye. So tiny it’s almost imperceptible, but when he turns his head, he can see it.  
  
Jesse’s hands are wringing.  
  
-  
  
Nobody made him do it.  
  
If there’s anything that can keep Gabe’s conscience clear, it’s that fact.  
  
Gabe never made Jesse do anything. Didn’t force him into Blackwatch. Didn’t force him into the op. Didn’t force Jesse to tie that noose --or to step back from it.  
  
All he ever say to Jesse is what he’d said before they left for the damn op, standing there with the war he’d been shouldering for the kid and saying only, ‘ _if you don’t wanna do it, then you don’t have to do it’._

It’s been three days and the kid looks so damn sorry that Gabe can hardly face him. The kid looks so damn dejected and small that by the afternoon of the third day, Gabe sends him out of the training hall with a stern wave, saying that it’s for Jesse’s benefit, and knowing it’s for both of theirs.  
  
Out in the hall, the kid catches his breath, recovering, before Gabe joins him and brackets him in against the wall with a large, angry, arm.  
  
“Alright,” Gabe says, in a low voice. “What happened?”  
  
Jesse still looks pale as all hell. Sick as a puppy, and Gabe is just about sick of looking at it. Even sicker when the kid looks past him and squirms. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” He mutters, nastily, without the ‘sir’ that should be present.  
  
Three days of this shit. It’s a wonder the kid’s got any damn skin left on his hands the way he’s been wringing them, and Gabe can’t take another minute of silence about it.  
  
Suddenly angry, Gabe thumps the wall by the kid’s head in frustration. “Goddamnit, Jesse!” He barks out. The feeling of the cold, hard wall against his palm is secondary to him, suddenly, by the new intensity of pallor that overcomes the kid. God, Jesse looks like his skin wants to crawl off his own damn bones, and Gabe feels regret ring distantly to him.  
  
He clears his throat and looks away, withdrawing his arm hesitantly to give the kid some freedom. But it comes at a price, and the moment he gives Jesse some air, he speaks, again. “Look,” He says, trying to sound gentle, even if it’s too late, and even if he’s forgotten how to be gentle as of recent. “If something --happened--...it’s my responsibility to--”  
  
“Nothin’ _happened_ .” The kid still doesn’t exactly look at him when he talks. The eye contact comes at the end of his words, and Jesse’s face looks all pinched and wrong. Like he’s got a stone in his shoe, or worse. “Where the hell d’you get any ideas like that anyway?”  
  
The tone is arms-length and angry. Defensive. It’s strange how familiar Jesse had looked with his fingers all flush against rope. Stranger still that they’re here and Gabe thinks he’s further away. That he understands even less: the kid a book he’s reading in reverse.  
  
Gabe tries to cling to what he knows. To what’s beyond his gaze. “Look,” He says, again, as if it has ever helped anybody to see reason, “You’ve been off since the last op, and I’m not the only one that’s n--”  
  
Jesse straightens at that, looking right up at Gabe but keeping his gaze somehow distant. “If you don’t want me on the next op, just say it.” The kid tells him, bitterly. “I don’t need your pussyfootin’.” He lets out a sharp exhale before adding a vitriolic little, “Sir.” as an afterthought.  
  
And Gabe doesn’t like that a single bit. He tries to draw from his sympathy for the kid --from his patience, but suddenly finds himself running on empty.  
  
“Interrupt me again and you won’t be running _any_ ops for another six months.” Gabe snaps, straightening himself so that he fills all of Jesse’s vision. So the kid is reminded of who’s in charge. “And you better be goddamned thankful for my pussyfooting, ‘cause it’s the only thing keeping me from kicking your ass to psychiatric.”  
  
He stares down at Jesse, waiting to be tested. Waiting for more of the kid’s attitude. But Jesse keeps his gaze this time, swallowing again, testing Gabe in the same way before dropping his gaze, at long last, looking past Gabe absently with this haunted sort of look.  
  
“I don’t need no doctor.” The kid says, quietly. “M’fine.”  
  
Gabe could take him at his word. He could. If Jesse says he’s fine, Gabe could just believe it and get on with his day and sleep at night and forget all of the ugliness --but he can’t. The kid’s quiet little lie isn’t convincing enough to ease his conscience, so he sighs, and crosses his arms.  
  
“Sure you don’t want a second opinion on that?”  
  
Jesse looks up at Gabe again. His head cants slightly and his shoulders shift in this way that looks so --uncomfortable? Desperate? He laments that he doesn’t know the kid better enough to interpret it, and would wait for the kid to speak if he didn’t have this sinking feeling that Jesse doesn’t even know how to articulate himself. Like he never learned.  
  
He takes a small step back and jams his fist into his pockets, trying to seem as non-confrontational possible when he says, “I can’t make you. But it might --might be good for you.”  
  
Jesse chews his lip and takes a breath in through his nose. “I don’t want nobody’s pity.” He says --repeating the sentiment, really, but it’s probably the only thing Jesse is sure of, so Gabe lets it be, nodding.  
  
“Trust me, kid, we all got better things to do.” He says, tiredly. He looks at Jesse and sighs again. “Look; if you don’t wanna do it, then--”  
  
“Then I don’t hafta do it --I know, I know.” That must be discomfort. Gabe notes it in the suddenly sharp posture of the kid, like he’s trying to stand taller. Like he’s trying to compensate for how small he’s sounded recently. It doesn't work. It never has.  
  
(God knows Jesse never looked smaller to him standing on that crate, his fingers at his throat, like grasping at the end of a tether.)  
  
The thought is so awful that Gabe feels like he wants to comfort the kid somehow. To pull him into a hug or grasp his shoulder and say something --something that will help Jesse to understand that he’s only doing this because he cares. Because he’s seen so many go under, and a good man is so hard to find.  
  
But he doesn’t dare brush  Jesse, afraid to touch the kid inside of his own cage, and instead, murmurs, “If you just do it once, I’ll get off your back.”  
  
Jesse smiles at that --sniffs, and then laughs, hollowly. “The hell y’will.” He looks at Gabe as if he’s trying to sound it out. Like he’s testing Gabe again to see how serious he is.  
  
Gabe matches his gaze. “I will.” He says, solemnly. He watches Jesse’s hands come up to the level of his waistband as he rubs his hands, again, wringing nervously. There’s a compulsion in Gabe to swat the kid’s hands away from eachother, or to do something, and it’s so overwhelming that he has to fold his arms across his chest to dissuade from even touching Jesse.  
  
Pained, Gabe keeps his hands in tight fists and coughs out, “What do you say?”  
  
Jesse looks back up at him, the movement in his hands stilling, his face still with consideration. He looks so young. He looks sinless and lost, and it’s not a million miles from what Jack used to look like (and still does, now and then).  
  
“I’ll think about it.” Jesse says, after a while, in a stilted little voice. He blinks at Gabe like he’s preparing for a reaction, and when the suspense gets too much, he says, “Awright?”  
  
Gabe remembers the doctrine by which he governs the kid: ‘ _if you don’t wanna do it, then you don’t have to do it’_ .  
  
So he says, “Alright.” even though it’s anything but, and leads Jesse back into the training room.  
  
-  
  
Jesse has to wonder if some hands are just hotter than others.  
  
If that’s the reason some touches feel like they linger on his skin like cigarette burns.  
  
If that’s why, sometimes, he feels tender in the wake of the wound, and suddenly the world feels too harsh and aggressive.  
  
Jesse never thought he’d ever be afraid of anything. He’s not sure if he is, now. If it’s fear, or something real close to it that he felt on the op, with the sudden feeling of heat on his back. Of another body, and then a hand at his mouth, or his throat. It had been quick. He hadn’t been able to tell, but he remembers the feeling.  
  
Not fear, he thinks. Too familiar, and enduring. Like it’s been there all the time, settled deep in the cracks where the light barely touches, and only then did Jesse remember.  
  
Only then, and then when one of the other boys heaved him to standing, touching him, the feeling burned onto his skin like slander. Jesse can feel it all --every point of contact that’s been on his skin since then, and he has to wonder if he’s finally cracked. If this is his delayed response to that goddamned lasso and he’s finally losing it.  
  
On the night of the op, he tried to shake it off in flight with no more than a frowning hour. He couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong. He took a downer but his dreams disturbed him into stirring, and then eluded his waking memory. He laid there in the dark of the transport, wringing his hands, remembering only two things.  
  
The feeling of a hand, hot on his face, over his nose and mouth with cruel pressure, and a whisper, to the left of him.  
  
Jesse thought he had recalled it. That he remembered.  
  
But he was mistaken.  
  
-  
  
Seventeen is the number, it turns out.  
  
Or maybe things just come to culmination all at once.  
  
Jesse is so aware of the sixteen times he’s been touched since it happened. He can feel it on him, heavy and greasy and wrong, burning him up to fever, and every time his mind is silent he can hear a whisper in his mind like the column of smoke in the back of his dreams.  
  
Jesse doesn’t know what the voice is saying. He doesn’t know if it’s imagined or a memory or a hallucination, and at this point, with the cold, heavy far that it shakes into him, he’s not sure which would be worse. He’s not sure if he wants to remember. Not sure what was in that pill.  
  
He’s got sixteen burning touches on his skin when the seventeenth comes --as he’s leaning heavy on his locker, spun out, the feeling of the hand over his mouth so hot and stifling and present --so there, that when another hand presses lightly on his shoulderblade, it happens.  
  
Jesse doesn’t remember moving. Or looking up. He’s not conscious of any of it, and yet, apparently, he turns.  
  
“McCree -- _hva faen_ !”  
  
He doesn’t feel the blood until it’s spilling down his face, the hot ruddiness of it startling him into lifting a hand. His fingers come back bloody, and dripping, and Jesse doesn’t even get a moment to respond or be horrified before his head throws itself back in a sharp, wretching motion.  
  
His legs go, first, and then comes the surly floor and his skin is burning-burning-burning and  every hand that’s ever touched him is scratching at him and bleeding him and nobody’s gonna spoil us _nobody’s gonna spoil us nobody’s gonna spoil_ \--  
  
-  
  
Jesse wakes to an angel, of sorts.  
  
Angela looks bright and heavenly above him when he opens his eyes, and lifts his head. She’s at his side, looking at something else, when she notices him wake, flashing him this fragile, worried look before moving away and leaving him to figure out his own headache.  
  
Jesse remembers feeling this like once before --when he was seven or so, and a neighborhood kid hit him in the back of the head with a wooden baseball bat. Only, this time there had been no baseball bat. Hell, no direct hit, even. He can’t really remember how he found himself here, but he can remember Olsen looking at him, spooked to all hell. And he highly doubts Olsen took him out.  
  
As he rights himself, propping up on one arm, he hears Angela’s gentle voice, and noise at the door, looking up to see her leading Gabriel Reyes in. Even seeing him is enough to set Jesse on edge, and he sits himself up while bringing his hands together, unconsciously, working his thumb against the opposite palm.  
  
Gabe doesn’t leave a moment for awkwardness or introductions. He’d heard all he wants from Angela, apparently, and waits for her to leave before he descends upon Jesse like a trapper on a cub who’s mother has stepped away, leaving him open, and easy to handle.  
  
He’s prepared for yelling. For a berating, but what comes is far worse --pity. Gabe perches by him, and says in a low voice, “You feel alright?”  
  
Jesse draws himself backwards, apprehensive. He swallows around his headache and shrugs. “Sure.” He says, levelly, trying to duck out of the question.  
  
Not that he’s allowed. Gabe corners him again by asking another. “You remember what happened?”  
  
Jesse doesn’t have a single card to play. He shakes his head.  
  
And that doesn’t make Gabe look disappointed, per se, but he looks --different. His eyes get this strange sort of sadness and he swallows, looking like every officer that’s ever had to deliver bad news, and if he’s honest, Jesse is much more the no-news-is-good-news type.  
  
“You, uh --remember what you were saying?” He’s looking at Jesse in that unbearable way. So Jesse looks away.  
  
“I wasn’t conscious of sayin’ nothin’.” He says, sourly, turning to stand up, but halted by a sudden seriousness that weighs down Gabe’s voice.  
  
“Sit.” He says, simply, in that way that Jesse knows won’t tolerate any fucking around. So he sits, swallowing, bringing his hands together nervously. “You were repeating yourself. You were rolling about on the damn floor like you were possessed, and you’re telling me you don’t remember?”  
  
Jesse shakes his head. His headache thrums and then the feeling of faint pressure --the weight at his back, the hand covering his mouth and nose and then throat flares like a shadow on a wall. He suppresses it desperately. He doesn’t want to know. “I don’t know what t’tell you, boss.”  
  
“Start with the truth.” Gabe has his arms crossed. “And I’ll think about not putting you on leave.”  
  
He’s said something similar before, but that doesn’t make the threat any less present. Jesse; aware --God, acutely aware, of everything Gabe has put on the line to keep him here. Everything he’s overlooked, and while it looks like Jesse is coming apart under the pressure of it; he’s not. There’s something else and he doesn’t have the guts or the brains or both to even begin to articulate it.  
  
So it feels like he’s begging uselessly when he says, “I am tellin’ the truth, boss.” He shrugs again, not at all helping his case. “I jus’ --I don’t really know what happened.”  
  
They descend into silence. It only makes Jesse antsier. He wishes Gabe would just tell him, one way or the other, what’s happening. He’s normally fine to be in trouble, used to the boss’s line of fire by now, but he hasn’t done anything wrong this time, and suddenly he’s refusing the blindfold without just cause.  
  
Sighing, Gabe looks at him again. His gaze is like a drill. “What happened on the op?”  
  
Jesse seizes. He looks away. “For the las’ time, nothing happened.” He looks back at Gabe with a mix of confusion and defensiveness. “What’s that gotta do with this anyway?”  
  
“You tell me.” Gabe says, shortly. He sounds so angry about it all, as if the whole thing personally wounds him, but it’s doing nothing to pry answers out of Jesse. He switches his tact, then, leaning back on his hand. “You ever had something like that happen before?”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“A fit. Whatever the hell that was in the locker room.” Gabe’s eyes are less angry now. Worried, actually, and Jesse would feel touched if he didn’t feel scrutinized, too. The man has a habit of putting him under a microscope.  
  
“No, sir.” Jesse murmurs, shaking his head. “A fit?”  
  
The other man leans back to pick up a sleek, metal-bound folder and flicks it open. He doesn’t look at Jesse for a few seconds, not reading, by the looks of it, but just considering the information before him, hidden from Jesse’s helpless sight. It’s a power move, Jesse thinks, derisively, but hell if it isn’t working.  
  
Eventually, Gabe speaks, still not looking at him. “Psychogenic, non-epileptic seizure, if you really want to know.”  
  
Jesse doesn’t know what all of those words mean, if he’s honest, but there’s something so much worse about the clinical sound to them --the potential horror so unrecognisable that he’s at a loss enough to scratch the nape of his neck fearfully and ask. “What’s that mean?”  
  
Jesse never learns his lesson --he asks before he’s even sure he wants to know. If he were dying --if there was something wrong inside of him that was big and important, he wouldn’t want to know. He wouldn’t want to have it hang over him like the shadow of a man standing over his bed.  
  
But he’s already asked, and it seems only fitting that Gabe is the shadow cast over him: his standover man, looking at him with suddenly rueful eyes and saying. “They tell me it’s a type of seizure that’s to do with --with, uh, distress.”  
  
Jesse huffs out a laugh. “Ain’t all seizures distressin’?”  
  
“Not all seizures are supposed to be caused by emotional distress.”  
  
Gabe looks at him, then, Drops the chart slightly and looks at him like Jesse’s already dead. Like he’s beyond help, festering with the dirt and the worms, and Jesse has to wonder if the boss knows something. He does --he knows what Jesse was saying when it overcame him; something that Jesse can’t recall for his own life.  
  
He tries to huff out another laugh, shrugging reflexively. “I don’t feel distressed, boss. M’right as rain, now--”  
  
“Shut up.” Gabe tells him, suddenly. “You really don’t remember what you were saying?”  
  
Jesse shakes his head. “No, sir.”  
  
“‘Nobody’s gonna spoil us’.”  
  
Hands on his back. On his neck --his mouth, and nose. Pressure at his back, cruel heat. The twist of an arm. Afraid --afraid, heart pounding hard enough to shake the body on top of his body, holding him still like a hog-tied dog, and that whisper like a branding iron to the side of his face that nobody’s gonna spoil usnobodysgonnaspoilnobodysgonna--  
  
Gabe anchors him back to the present with a cruel shake of the shoulder. “Hey.”  
  
Without thinking, Jesse wrenches back, away, tearing his commander off of him with sudden force like lightning. He realises it betrays him the moment he’s done it --chest heaving, eyes wild, drawn back in fight-or-flight as Gabe remains across from him, innocent to the action of it, drawing his shoulder back like he’s trying to seem less threatening. He stays like that for a few minutes, letting Jesse’s breathing settle letting the kid swallow and gather his thought, before moving slowly towards a counter and offering the kid some tissue.  
  
“Your nose.” He says, softly. Like he’s afraid his words are going to hurt the kid more.  
  
Jesse’s confused by the words until he draws a hand up and finds fresh blood on his face. It’s strident on his fingertips. Hot on his face. It feels disgustingly familiar.  
  
He nods, then, uselessly, and takes the tissue from Gabe in a stiff motion, stemming the flow of blood that’s seemingly halted. All the while, he feels eyes upon him, that shadow upon him, blocking out the sky, so dark and heavy that no sun dare squeak through. What can Jesse say? His head is empty, painful, and heavy. He doesn’t have any explanations.  
  
Gabe sighs, after a little while. He starts, “If there’s--...” but the words rot and fall away before they can develop into anything more. It gets Jesse’s attention though, and he finds it within himself to look back up at the other man. Only now Gabe won’t look at him. “If something’s happened, you don’t have to talk about it. I just --I need to know if--...if somebody in the unit--”  
  
Jesse swallows. “Aint nothin’ s’happened.” he says, vaguely, his thoughts unable to fathom into anything substantial. He hopes he sounds pitiful enough that Gabe won’t press, but he doesn’t.  
  
Gabe presses, inevitably, sounding almost hurt. “What does it mean, then? Why were you saying that ‘nobody--”  
  
“I don’t know!” Just hearing the word alone is too much. Jesse feels himself tense, and his brain ache, and his chest tighten unnaturally like some terrible pressure is trying to squeeze the life out of him. And it --it scares him. He exhales, raggedly, and drops the bloody tissue from his face so that Gabe can hear him clearer when he says again. “I don’t know what it means, awright?”  
  
Gabe is looking at him when he says it. He sees all that Jesse doesn’t guide: the prickle of his eyes and the tension of his posture and the sharp twist of the kid’s mouth like he’s trying to hold something back. Whatever it is, it isn’t enlightenment. The kid’s eyes are as lost and bewildered and angry as he’s ever seen them. There’s no deception to it: Jesse doesn’t know, and that’s worse.  
  
So they descend into another silence. A napalm quiet that Jesse can hardly stand. But what else is there to say? What else could worm its way out his mouth to change the situation?    
  
Eventually, Gabe murmurs, “I’m taking you off the Valparaiso op.”  
  
“What?”  
  
The kid’s teeth are bared like he’s ready to pick a fight about it, somehow. The nervous, terrible energy of his little outburst from before circumvented nastily. Gabe cuts him off with a waved hand and an interruption. “You think I’d clear you for it after today?” He asks the kid, coldly.  
  
Jesse looks at him with all the hatred he can muster. With all the vitriol he has in his bones. But he doesn’t disagree.  
  
“Look,” Gabe tries again. Tries softer. “I told you, I’m not gonna make you do anything. But it’d be irresponsible of me to put you in the field right now.”  
  
Jesse sniffs, blandly. “When you gonna clear me, then?” he looks away from Gabe with a sort of reckless misery. “Or you gonna keep me grounded forever?”  
  
It’s ugly. Gabe wishes that somebody else could handle this. Ana would know what to say to him. Would know how to coax more out of him. Hell, even Angela, probably. Even outside of the fact that Gabe doesn’t know the kid that well --that he doesn’t know what’s appropriate to say as a Commander and not a friend; the kid doesn’t really talk to anybody. Has no intimacy or solidarity with the rest of his unit. Or, none that wouldn’t come from exposure.  
  
Ana is the easiest Gabe ever sees the kid. The most open.  
  
But this isn’t her jurisdiction, and Jesse is Gabe’s beast to leash.  
  
“You’re good in the field, kid. We could use you in King’s Bay.” Gabe offers, weakly, watching the kid study him back.  
  
“Wha’s the catch?” Jesse asks him --croaks, almost instantly. It’s admirable, really. He might seem simple, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t sharp.  
  
“Psychiatric, first.” Gabe says. He says it quietly as if the tone of his voice will make the suggestion any more palatable to Jesse, who is already recoiling. “You only have to do an hour. Just one session.”  
  
The kid shakes his head, very slightly, and looks down at his hands. Without eye contact, or the ability to see his face, it’s hard to read what he’s thinking until he mutters, “You said you wasn’t gonna make me do nothin’.”  
  
“And I won’t.” Gabe says. “Kid, I can’t make you do a session. Wouldn’t be ethical.” He thinks to reach out for Jesse in a gesture of sympathy but his hand hovers strangely in the air between them as he realises his mistake, halting. “If you do a session, I’ll put you on King’s Bay. And --and if you don’t, I won’t.”  
  
Jesse is quiet for a few seconds like he’s considering it, at least. He brings his hands together, complete with dried blood on the fingertips of his left, and he begins the strange ritual of wringing them again. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking, and the gesture is so nervous that Gabe hears himself try to comfort the kid, “If you don’t want to do it--”  
  
Jesse looks up. “We been over this.” He says, stunted, and then sighs. “If it’s gonna get you offa my back, I guess I might as well.” He looks up at Gabe again and sniffs, and he has to wonder if the blood from the kid’s nose is painful. It doesn’t seem to be, and Gabe finds a small comfort in that.  
  
“Think it over.” He says, then, as his only real wisdom. He gets up and walks across the room slowly, waiting for something to occur to him to say --something that’ll fix this. But he doesn’t know Jesse well enough and the whole situation is so bizarre that he nearly leaves empty-handed.  
  
The only thing that stops him is Jesse.  
  
“I’ll be okay, anyway, y’know.” He says, defiantly.  
  
And Gabe smiles because he’s known it all the while.


End file.
